California Fur Rush facts for kids
Before the famous California Gold Rush in 1849, another exciting time happened in California. It was called the California Fur Rush. During this period, hunters from the United States, United Kingdom, and Russia came to California. They were looking for valuable animal furs.
California had many animals with thick fur. These included southern sea otters and Northern fur seals along the coast. In places like the San Francisco Bay Area and the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, hunters found North American beavers, North American river otters, martens, fishers, minks, gray foxes, weasels, and harbor seals. This early fur trade was very important. It helped open up the West, especially the San Francisco Bay Area, to trade with countries all over the world.
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Hunting Furs by the Sea
The fur trade along the Pacific Coast began in 1778. This was just three years after Juan de Ayala sailed the first ship through the Golden Gate. It started with Captain James Cook's third voyage. His crew got otter skins at Nootka Sound further north. They were amazed by the high prices paid for these furs in China. One trip made a profit of 1,800%!
In 1783, news spread about the huge profits from selling otter skins to China. Soon, ships from New England in America began sailing to the Pacific Coast. They started hunting sea otters and later, beavers. By 1785, the fur trade in California was already active. The Spanish government even made rules for collecting otter skins. This fur trade helped New England merchants recover from money problems after the American Revolutionary War.
France also became interested. In 1786, La Pérouse visited California. He bought about a thousand sea otter skins. He sold them in China for ten thousand dollars. He noted that local Native Americans caught otters using snares. Before this, the Spanish didn't realize how valuable furs were. They were from warmer places and didn't need furs.
However, the Spanish soon started a big otter hunting business. Vicente Vasadre y Vega arrived in 1786. He made a plan where all otter skins had to be sold to him. They quickly got Christian Native Americans from the Missions to bring in pelts. Vasadre sailed away with 1,060 otter skins to be sent to the Philippines.
Robert Gray, captain of the ship Columbia, found the mouth of the Columbia River in 1792. Other explorers had not been able to find it since 1775. By the 1790s, American ships were leading the fur trade south of Russian America. Ships from Boston especially controlled the fur trade between California and China. This continued until the 1820s, when most sea otters were gone. This was before Jedediah Smith, the first American mountain man, came to California in 1826 looking for beaver furs.
Russian Fur Hunters in California
The Russian-American Company also joined the fur trade. In 1809, Ivan Kuskov sailed into Bodega Bay. He returned to Alaska with beaver skins and over 2,000 sea otter furs. The Russians then built Fort Ross nearby. They wanted to hunt animals in the area and get food for their settlements in Alaska.
Before building Fort Ross, the Russians hired American ships starting in 1810. They provided Aleuts (Native Alaskan hunters) and baidarkas (kayaks). These hunters went after otters along the coast of Spanish California. From 1810 to 1812, Americans working for the Russians secretly brought Aleuts into San Francisco Bay. The Spanish tried to stop them, sometimes capturing or shooting them.
By 1817, sea otters in the area were almost gone. The Russians asked the Spanish and later the Mexican governments for permission to hunt further south. In 1824, a Russian agent named Kiril Timofeevich Khlebnikov hired Captain John B.R. Cooper. Cooper took Aleut hunters and their kayaks on his ship Rover. They hunted sea otters as far south as the Baja California peninsula.
Sealing the Farallon Islands
American ships also hunted seals. In 1810, the ships Albatross and O'Cain met two other American ships near the Farallon Islands. They took at least 30,000 seal skins. By 1822, the number of fur seals on the Farallons had dropped a lot. The Russians then stopped hunting there for two years.
Even though American ships had already hunted there, the Russians kept a sealing station on the Farallon Islands from 1812 to 1840. They caught 1,200 to 1,500 fur seals each year. After 1824, the number of seals kept going down. Soon, only about 500 could be caught annually. Within a few more years, the fur seal was completely gone from the islands.
The California fur trade ended as most fur-bearing animals became scarce. By 1836, Richard Henry Dana Jr. noted that trading cattle hides had become more important than furs. He wrote about his ship carrying "forty thousand [cattle] hides and thirty thousand horns, besides several barrels of otter and beaver skins." As marine fur animals became too few to hunt, the Russians left Fort Ross in 1841.
Animals Today
Today, some of these animals are making a comeback in California.
California golden beavers are returning to the Bay Area. They are moving across north San Francisco Bay. You can find them in places like Kirker Creek, Alhambra Creek, and the Napa River. These beavers likely came from the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta. This area once had the most beavers in North America. Also, beavers were brought back to Pescadero Creek and Lexington Reservoir in the 1930s. From there, they have spread to other creeks and even crossed the south Bay.
In spring 2007, a survey counted 3,026 sea otters along the central California coast. Before the fur trade, there were about 16,000. California's sea otters today are all from a small group of about 50. This group was found near Big Sur in 1938. Their main home now is from just south of San Francisco to Santa Barbara County.
Northern fur seals began to return to the Farallon Islands in 1996.
Both the California golden beaver and the southern sea otter are known as keystone species. This means they have a very important and wide-ranging impact on their local environments.
